Monday, June 30, 2014

Surf Magsurf!

Superconductors are really cool materials! One property called the Meissner effect makes superconductors expel magnetic fields. To do this,  currents are induced in the superconducting material, generating its own magnetic field to cancel the field of the approaching magnet. This group from Paris made a superconducting hoverboard and magnetic track, which they demonstrate in this video. Check it out!

This is another cool video describing a superconducting material on a magnetic track. Check it out!
This TED talk talks a little about the physics of this phenomenon.

Can you imagine how this could be useful? What challenges would engineers need to tackle before using this in practical applications? Comment in the comments section.

Friday, June 27, 2014

Motivating squares!


I find these three squares very motivating!

They represent the area that would be enough for solar power plants to produce a quantity of electricity consumed by the world, in Europe (EU-25) and Germany (De) according to data provided by the German Aerospace Center in 2005 within the project Desertec. Read more about this interesting project and their current activities here!

Monday, June 23, 2014

Solar Energy Usage Record

Microsoft Clipart
Hey, check out this article talking about how Germany is using solar energy. They just set a record for single day energy use coming from solar power. Also, the benefits and costs of their approach to using solar energy is discussed.

Monday, June 16, 2014

Real or Not?


Check out this video? What do you think? Real or not?

This is a real phenomenon. With your parent or guardian's permission you can do this at home. It's a fun and easy demonstration. In science, when something is observed, we must always think about whether what we are observing is the result of the thing that we are trying to measure or if it is affected by something else. For example, it would be fruitless to use a setup like this to measure the force of gravity (it could be done, theoretically, but would be complicated to do in practice; it is much better to use a non-magnetic material or an insulating pipe (a pipe that wouldn't allow these eddy currents). It is important to always know what you are measuring and the things that could effect those measurements. For this reason, we run controlled experiments.

Saturday, June 14, 2014

Solar Impulse

From www.hashslush.com

Have you heard about the Swiss Solar Impulse project? If not – read about it and follow the project activities here. Their aim is to develop an aircraft that uses only solar power! And they have already come pretty far!

Thursday, June 12, 2014

I'm a scientist. Is science fun?

I just found this really cool site where scientists from all different disciplines are interviewed. Check it out! Also, check out this video, where scientists are interviewed about what excites them about science.

For me, I like learning stuff. I like gathering information and strategizing how to get more information about the real world. Although the contributions of an individual scientist are often small, I like contributing to something larger that can have real benefits to society, in general. I find science to be a lot of fun. It is like a real-life mystery novel.

Friday, June 6, 2014

Ice cream and science!

From http://www.subzeroicecream.com
One practical property of the element nitrogen is that it, at atmospheric pressure, boils at –320.4 F. This makes it suitable to use in cold traps for laboratory equipment and to cool detectors such as the X-ray detector in scanning or transmission electron microscopes.

Another, more unexpected, application of liquid nitrogen is SUPER fast ice cream making! Liquid nitrogen has made the ice cream café, Smitten, in San Francisco very popular.


                                                         From CCN Tech




Monday, June 2, 2014

The Art of Capturing the Sun and Nature, Itself

Sputtered polycrystalline Cu2Se film grown on oxidized silicon substrate
 In our research group, we study thin films of materials. Because these films and are too thin to see with the naked eye and the details of the film surface are important, we must use a variety of techniques to image our samples. These images can be quite beautiful.
The above image is a colorized image of a sputtered polycrystalline Cu2Se thin film. The film has a very rough surface (it was a bad film for what we wanted to do with it), but shows some interesting things. The micrograph shows that Cu2Se prefers to grow in certain directions and on certain surfaces, since the shapes are faceted (not rounded, flattened along certain sides). The film was extremely rough and has pinholes, as the color contrast suggests. It also looks pretty cool!
Polycrystalline Cu2ZnSnSe4 film grown on molybdenum-coated soda-lime glass 
This image shows the surface of a polycrystalline Cu2ZnSnSe4 thin film. You can see that the space is filled well (there are no holes). Similarly, the film did not grow perfectly flat, although it is much flatter than the previous image.
There are actually science photo contests. Check out the FEI image gallery or the FEI Flickr photostream.
One of my best friends is a photojournalist. I am sometimes struck by the similarities between aspects of our work. We both depict reality through images to further understanding. We both worry about our very investigative presence interfering with or altering the reality that we are trying to capture and show. I just focus on inanimate objects and how they are made, while she focuses on people and their interactions with the inanimate objects. I typically image using electrons, while she images using light. Science incorporates a lot of art.